Eddies of backpacks

 

colonize the color-blind

night.

 

I follow how they grow—a gray rainbow

leaking into the chaos of human needs.

Grape-shaped clouds crisscross

 

like the scars

on my chalked arms.

 

We transform into tree

 

trunks when digging through trash cans,

volcanic ash clouds of waste. I waste

 

thoughts

on a pair of black rain boots.

Later dream of a field of leather

 

gloves.

 

With dust of daybreak I return to holes

in my shoes, stuff them with used

 

napkins.

Imagine the mouth that found

 

relief, the grease

on someone’s chin

 

 while I smear motor

oil

on my elbows and knees.

 

 

 

 

Lullaby for Windows

 

In a house made of moss we slept

with curtains instead of blankets.

 

The rough fabric clung to my toenails.

Windows kept their jealous eyes on us.

 

My mother rubbed ointment on my feet

to prevent them from pulling threads.

 

The moss grew so thick, we ran

a comb through the hallway to reach

 

the doors. Our hair turned coarse green.

Every night I listened to the growth of new

 

patches on the roof, dark dust on windows.

My mother sang me lullabies about countries

 

where everything remained unchanged.

 

 

 

 

Silver Birch

 

Tree of what exposes itself.

Your pock-marked mimicry

complements

 

the moon. Between your icicle

spines children chase

white reflections or pocket

 

diamond leaves as if they stored

your secrets. Tree of slender trunks

and short lifespan,

 

your forests offer no hiding

place, your grey bark drowns

day and night in cemented light.

 

In their dreams mothers of stillborn

babies scrub your black clefts

with raw palms.

 

But the wounds always grow back.

Silver birch, stripped to the bone,

you conceal nothing from sight.

 

You are the city of bloodshot eyes.

 

 

 

 

Hemorrhage

 

Hurled through the windshield of memory,

sideswiped and mangled,

I hear your voice in storm flood sirens.

 

To taste blood is to know. To swallow

the emotion is to stomach

the pained.

 

Yesterday I saw your black

dandelion of hair—a color

I never heard before.

 

Visions of your storytelling

strain my dreams.

                 Your book of inventions ashes now,                        

bits of bones.

 

I shouldn’t feel so far apart,

but the brain is a glass of water,

the muscular pulse of broken

patterns.

 

 

 

 

The Right Words Do Not Travel

 

You love the way distance levels topography.

 

Navigating grids of different cities

you lose track of possessions,

scatter books in coffee shops across continents. 

 

I trust satellites to guide me to streets

where you once lived.

 

Sometimes at 3am I load what I can’t live without,

drive miles of scattered thoughts.

But the freeways in this net of a city

always catch me at exits.

 

Your years skimming runways taught you

to leave the roads, to think

in terms of time zones.

 

My experience with other languages

taught me no word in English is

long enough to reach other continents. 

 

And still you love how one-way

is shaped by two separate words.